


When Winter's Ice Descends

by inthesnowglobe



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Please Don't Hate Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 00:52:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthesnowglobe/pseuds/inthesnowglobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened after Sansa and Sandor escape the night of the Battle on the Blackwater.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Winter's Ice Descends

 

 

It was hard to hear past the ringing in his ears. His head was splitting from where Trant, Blount and Slynt and throttled him almost to the point of unconsciousness. Close to his left, he could make out the sounds of Sansa sobbing and pleading but he couldn't make out what it was that she was saying. He lifted his bleary swollen eyes to look at her but a stream of blood ran into his left eye, forcing him to close it.

 

Joffrey's voice was ringing loud behind him as he writhed against his bonds. “As their final penance for their cowardly and treasonous acts on the night our own city gates were being sacked, Lady Stark should look upon the ruinous face that she entrusted to _free_ her to her traitorous roots. A dog should never bite the hand that feeds him lest the master bite back.”

 

Sandor roared and fought in earnest against the shackles that bound him to the block where the sword would liberate his body from his head.

 

He heard Sansa whimper in pain and his head snapped towards her. Blinking past the blood pouring into his eyes, he could make out Payne forcing Sansa's face towards Sandor's as tears cut clean tracks down her dirty and bloodied face. Her eye was swollen and blacken and her lip was split and bleeding. Her expression was twisted into a sorrow that had no business gracing something so pure and innocent.

 

“Please, I'll do anything! Have mercy on him!” She was pleading for his life. Not her own.

 

“No!” Sandor roared again in his fury as he tried to drown out her pleas for his safety over her own. “You pathetic little fuck!”

 

“A dog should learn his place. To teach them, we take a beloved member of his pack before his eyes to remind him of the power the masters hold over a beaten cur,” Joffrey continued. Sandor could hear the smile in his voice. “Ilyn, bring The Hound his whores head.”

 

Sandor struggled until the hard metal bit into his flesh and broke his wrists and thumbs. He felt the searing heat of the blood pouring along his hands more than he felt the pain.

 

His eyes met Sansa's as he screamed and fought feebly. He saw her mouth the words more than he heard them as Ilyn Payne unsheathed her own father's sword from the scabbard and raised it high above his head.

 

_I love you._

 

“Little bird, look at me!”

 

Her eyes were panicked and searching for something to anchor to.

 

“Their heads can stand side by side on pikes as she stares at the grotesque monster that she chose over the safety of the crown until the crows pick the eyes from her skull and render her blind forever,” Joffrey intoned towards the crowd gathered in the same place they were in when her father had lost his head.

 

Sandor felt tears of his own as he futilely drank in everyone of her beautiful features.

 

Her copper hair.

 

The way her delicate nose turned up just a little at the end.

 

Her wide blue eyes never left his as Ice descended and severed the life force from him with a bloody spray against his ruined skin.

 

Sandor felt a crushing pain in his chest as Payne crossed over to where her head had rolled and brought it to where Sandor was forced to look below his own block. Everything that he had ever fought for broke and he gave up his own fight. His own head meant nothing to him.

 

“Now bring me the disloyal dog's and let them adorn the pikes beside her fathers,” Joffrey finished. “And let this be a lesson to any who think that there is any safety outside of the walls of the King's Keep.”

 

Sandor wouldn't look upon the savaged head of his lovely little bird.

 

She had finally been set free of her cage and soon Sandor would be flying with her, her God's be good. He had never found piety in his life until this second before his own beheading.

 

Sandor prayed until the moment when the light was suddenly snuffed out and a new light found its way into the back of his eyes until it was blinding.

 

There, haloed in a ethereal ring of copper strands, was his little bird.

 

She was smiling.

 

And Sandor smiled as he found himself in her arms.

 

 


End file.
